Summary

Don't move, just stay where you are.

The Good

My first impressions of this version were awesome. I loaded up the game, and seeing as I had already beaten Doom previously, I knew what to do. However, before I had taken a step, I was stopped from the music in the background. At first, it didn't sound like Doom. The sound card was way too advanced. However, it isn't long before you realize that this is a remix (and a very glorious remix at that) of the classic E1M1 theme. "Holy crap," I thought to myself, "this is awesome!" I literally stopped and listened to the theme and didn't start playing until after it had looped a few times. And that's when the problems began...

The Bad

...For starters, the framerate is one of the worst I've ever seen in a commercial game. To put it bluntly, 3DO Doom is extremely choppy, and animations feel like a slideshow (or even more so, if you want to take a cheap shot at Doom). All the frames of animation are there, they just take twice as long to play out. Not only this, but the game frequently pauses to load data from the CD. Most of the time in which this occurred to me was when I was opening a door, meaning I'd be ambushed/unprepared. If I hadn't practically memorized the enemy locations from playing Doom so much, 3DO Doom would be a lot harder.

One more thing about the framerate is that it rubs salt in the wounds by not only being slow, but inconsistent. It's choppy by default, but slows even more when enemies or a lot of textures are onscreen. Which means this version has a tendency to abruptly change the framerate. Such as chugging along slowly but with a few periodic hiccups of a faster framerate.

Since 3DO Doom is actually ported from the Atari Jaguar, the maps themselves are much more simplified than on the PC. Like most console versions, it's missing the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind bosses, but this actually is one of the only non-PC versions of this game to have enemies feature more than just a front side. And it features the 'invisibility' effects for the Spectre. However, the inclusion of these seemed to give too much data to load. The soundtrack rocks enough, and I could've taken another sub-average SNES or 32X version of the game with this awesome soundtrack, as long as it were more playable.

I know it sounds a bit rough to hate the game so much for one thing, but Doom requires consistency. Fluidity. Otherwise, you'd be hit by enemies that you can't aim at right because of the jerkiness. Yes, the framerate pretty much kills the gameplay and any of the enjoyment that the PC version has in spades and the other versions semi-replicate. 3DO Doom is simply not even fun.

The Bottom Line

Don't get this version, unless you're an avid-Doom collector who absolutely has to get his or her hands on every single version that's ever been spawned. Even then, own it for novelty, not entertainment.